I work for a company that proudly touts the phrase “a better everyday life for the many”. While I strongly believe in the sentiment of this mantra and I willingly co-opt it as my own – my experience of being just one of many today is to live overwhelmed by the magnitude of our collective maelstrom of humanity. To exist as a seedling of this species offers a share in the extensive history of destruction that we have inflicted upon the earth. I am implicated by my existence, a guilty participant of the gigantisms of our civilized ills. I am rendered impotent by my miniscule proportion to the masses and yet I am intuitively endowed with the notion of a possible and necessary change. I am seeking to infiltrate the doings of the “many” in order to harness the power of this sleeping giant.
The most frightening aspect of being one amongst billions is just that. The proportion of an individual against the backdrop of masses, of the many, renders the one undeniably insignificant. Not only are you only one amongst the billions of your time, but one amongst the exponential human kind, past, present and future. What is our place together here now? What is our place against the tomorrow if it comes, and against the past of which we are gifted an inherited omniscience. The experience of being the miniscule one in body and ability, but with the accessible awareness and knowledge of the entirety of our species swarming in the mind. The totality of a collective consciousness can be carried by the many but is crushing to each and everyone, rendering us as individuals terrified and paralyzed.
My North American experience of the world led me to discover my arrogant individualism only when I stepped away from my spacious and youthful culture to visit and work in Japan. Here I recognized immediately the insignificance of my own self. If your single winged butterfly can cause tropical storms – it cannot touch the history and largess magnitude that lays upon the sizably small island of Japan. Such a place invokes the experience of a gravitron ride – spinning, spinning, wild imagery but pinned to your leaden physicality. Here is a place where one could live unnoticed and irrelevant for a lifetime, but yet free in a way that I cannot touch – valued for a lack of individuality, valued for dedicated participation and contribution – and for protecting a calm and unfurled daily life of the many, many, many.
I reflect upon my experience in Japan specifically because it was where I recognized that any localized effort, passion, or intent that I might have lived and proclaimed in relation to my intense desire for an epic rescue of my world was embarrassingly futile and childish when held up to the global reality. This world I experienced in Japan had long surpassed the quality of life we were dreaming of, had long out populated us per sq/m and lived well. They lived well! This many, this mass of people lived in a way that western alarmist concerns rail against as an inevitable disaster. But Japan is tightly packed, is a frenzy of material consumerism, is all city, all industrial, a 24 hours spinning ride of human construct. And yet there is nature, there is quietude, there is civility and there is an uncanny appreciation for simplicity and handmade quality. Where you imagine the future in which we consume pills instead of meals, and we live faceless in tiny cubicles stacked upon each other already exists. It already exists and I am of no consequence.
The fright of becoming irrelevant. My carefully engineered stance as a consumer activist, as a vegetarian, a cultural creative, a subversive at heart, my self idealized siege of change lays flaccid at my feet and trampled by the masses.
Here lay the death of my soloist career in counter culture. Here lie the petty projects, the composted contributions, the recycled wardrobe, the vegan restaurants, the organic cat food, the city hall meetings, the cycled kilometres, the reusable mugs, the natural toothpaste, the baking soda tub scrub. Here lies the decades of tireless crusade to make changes that amounted to no more than an iron deficiency and a waste related guilt complex.
Who am I the seed of my intent?
Here is the epoch of my transformation. Here is the moment of my utter despair at the notion of witnessing a man made apocalypse. Here I lie in terrified paralysis. Here is the moment when I break in to the world of the “many” and I must participate to survive.
Who am I the witness?
I am an artist. I am skilled of hand and a natural voyeur. I stand against the paintings, I stand against my nightmarish visions of material anxiety. Alone I would drive to the outskirts of industrial areas and pen the encroaching monstrous landscape of rusting metal car parts, dried grasses and complex structures of shipping containers and mechanism. The horrendous scale of these isolated geographies adhered both awe and ache to my paintings. This was the message I believed could draw attention. This was my purpose. Look! Look at the beauty of our terrifying madness! Look at the landscape once revered for its wild uncontrollable mystery! Look what we have done! Look at the frenetic living beast that shapes itself beyond our control while of our making! Look what we are capable of and look how it looms just out of view.
I collect things. I collect materials of interest. I cling to the potentiality that they offer for future projects. I store things that may one day be reused or diverted from the landfill. I live amongst fabrics, metals, plastics and paints. I hoard. I scrape tiles from walls and salvage building parts. I neatly and tightly pack storage unit after storage unit with the means to the future. I keep cabinets of canned food for the post apocalyptic moment of relief when I may implement my contingency plan. Somewhere inside this amounts to altruism. I am trying to save something. I am trying to fulfill a role as the impresario of waste.
I once lived in an attic above an elderly man who was left a house in trust. In his life previous he was homeless by his own favour. He had a deep passion for collecting and repurposing. He would gleefully offer up cables, fabrics, telephones, cat toys, an endless list of items provided upon request. He rarely left his home but for the lengthy expeditions upon which curiosity and worry would arise as to his whereabouts. He rarely spoke to anyone. His name was James. His cat Priscilla.
Eventually during a sojourn, the realtor who was responsible for the property deemed his suite a fire hazard and had all of his belongings removed and disposed of. His shelter for the lost and displaced was desecrated. His love, his generosity, his acquisitions of potentiality trashed. Value or negative value? Items having once been desired, now discarded , now a liability. The crisis of our compulsive making, our worthless detritus, seen clearly only by an anxious few as for what they are. The beauty and horror of our creation. The birth of our industrious nature, cast aside for new blood, for new love. The absolutely heartless scorn and dismissal of James and his activism. James and his altruistic and humanitarian rehabilitation of the abandoned. This looming risk of fire, this critical state of acquisition speak volumes to the real inherent risks. The risks not to James, not to the house, not to the neighbourhood. The weeping pus of our deepest sore. We can flush the wound, we can disinfect our space, we can live with the mental clarity of minimalism.
Who am I, the saviour of waste?
Why are they James’ compulsions, his obsessions? This diabolical madness is only evidence of our excess, of our purposeless and frenzied consumption, digestion and waste of an absolute material vacuum of value.
James is a collector of shit. I am a collector of shit. This is regarded as mania.
Who am I the sell out?
To be an activist is to be the antagonist. To fight against and critique the many. To protect the many from the selected few. To paint the selected few as hero, as victim. To regard the goings ons, the doings of the institution, of the great machine as erroneous and as demon. To bare witness. To alert and sound alarm, to protect, to salvage, to rescue and to mourn. The underdog, the counter attack, the special interest, the sub category, the subordinate.
To rail against, to revolutionize, to render, to dissolve, to subvert or to surrender.
To solicit desire is to contribute to the pain. To create for the machine is to be of the machine yourself. To be a part of this mechanism is my unavoidable folly. To sell myself is to sell out.
Who am I the whore?
I gave myself to him. I gave my allegiance and I gave away my naiveté. I gave myself and I gained my power. I gained relevancy in his eyes. I was paid. I was employed. I was mechanized. I was easy to convert. I was sold a share in the belief that is for a greater good. I wanted the greater good. I wanted the better everyday life.
A company with values, a company with culture. I am part of the many. I have the privilege of responsibility. I can make a difference from the inside. I can be a leader. I can climb the ladder. I am of value. I can sell a bookcase. I can sell ten thousand bookcases. I contribute.
I have beliefs, I have morals, I have ethics. I am a consumer. I have consumer ethics. I want a better everyday more ethical life. I want to believe it can be true. I want to believe it is not a sham. I want a nice home, I want a functional workspace. I want a kitchen to dream about. I want this for the many. There are so many. I am frightened for the many. I am frightened by the many.
What is market value in relation to eternity? In relation to the earth? In relation to our salvation? In relation to our undoing, our failure, our crisis. The product, the material, the core resources. The items we seek to sell, the items we seek to buy. All of it deemed valuable by our collective desire or otherwise without value and therefore engaged as a burden. We shift, the perspective shifts. The trend empowers the plastics, the hemp, the organics, the recycled, the resourceful, the uncanny, the ironic.
What is market capital in relation to our purpose? To our humanity? Our shifting perspective, our demands, our satisfaction, our desires, our voice. Who to blame? The production to meet demands, the consumer subjectivities, the race to satiate and capitalize. To fulfil the needs. To take care of our assets, to take advantage of our competitive advantage.
Purchasing power. The sword of the consumer. The retail Joan of Arc throws up her arsenal of knowledge, her special interest, her consumer responsibility. She wants more, she wants accountability, she wants ethics. She wants a better everyday life – but not at the cost of many. She is answerable to. She is a force to be reckoned with. She is emancipated. She has credit.
I am startled by the apathy of most. I learn that my infernal questioning causes grief. I learn that I am not of the many. I sense that they are happy. I sense that they do not fear the end, that they do not cease to live because the end is near.
How can I contain my grief. How can I harness the potential. How do I learn to manipulate, to speak the language. How to I relieve myself of myself in order to engage them? How if I am to make change, if I am to participate in a last ditch effort to survive, to save myself, do I subvert the machine?
Who am I instrumental?
I become a leader. I make a puppet of myself. I perform a song and dance. I get my way. I smile and I show empowerment. I explain that a difference can be made. I propose that making a difference actually matters. I remind that it is the way of the value, the way of the culture. I report that it will save money. I congratulate the success. I make a difference. I make them make a difference, and then they make differences without me.
Have they changed me?
I wonder sometimes if the fight is worthwhile. Am I bailing out this sinking vessel with my tiny insignificant hands? Am I flailing about like a madman? Am I lost to the perspective needed to find the strength to stop and mourn the loss as it passes. To grieve and embrace the final moments of this life in awe, in lieu of the frantic efforts to resuscitate that diminish the fragile beauty of passing. Is this simply our time to go?
But I am not ready to let go. I organize. I craft strategy. We sort, we separate, we calculate. The awareness grows. The realization of the potential surfaces. The kilograms, the cost, the percentages. The improvements, the revisions. The minds of people change. The pet project becomes business acumen. The grassroots become concept document.
I had often longed for a reason. Longed for a different century, a mode of dress, of meaning. A world of historical significance, an ideal time of poetry and romance, of velvet and passion, of a painter’s salon, of a smoking jacket and cigar, of an English country side, of a colonial journey. A moment of inclusion in relevancy. A ticket across the ocean on a ship, a wartime bride, a radical on horseback, a weapon and a skill, a gun and a tank, a pen and an audience. Who am I the Queen of England. Who am I Elizabeth. Who am I the Pharaoh, the mathematician, the Van Gogh, the Einstein, the Medea. Who am I the milk maid. Who am I the Joan of Arc. Who am I a contribution.
I am but a shopping mall. I am a weekend between Monday thru Friday. I am a punch clock, a gas station, a television program. I am a uniform. I am a lanyard. I am my name tag. I am my rental apartment. I am a litter box and a refrigerator. I am inconsequential but I participate. I perform a function. I follow in footsteps. I am uncertainty. I am thirty. I am childless. I am alone.
I am afraid of the end. I am afraid not to matter.
Glory in the apocalypse. This is the time now. This is the reason you were born in this century of mediocrity. In this decade post activism, in this decade post meaning. In this time beyond turning back. In the time of revelation. Of forgiveness too late. Cling to the last tree. It knows you, it is you. Cling to this tree while the river swells around you and the wind storms against your resolve. You didn’t mean it. It didn’t mean anything. It meant everything.
You didn’t see it coming. We saved the best for last. A grand finale awaits. We spectators to our own gruesome and timely beheading. A suicide watch. Watching our own murder. How long after we are removed from our bodies are we conscious? How long will we gaze upon our illness and reflect upon our mistakes? When will the lights go out forever? When will it cease to matter?
The police line flaps in the breeze. No one to collect the evidence. A cold case file.
They are waiting for grandchildren. Waiting for babies. Waiting to throw offspring into the first circle of hell. Birthed into Limbo, land of the guiltless damned. Waiting for pomp and circumstance. Waiting to feel loved. Waiting to find out what life is really about. This is it, this is why you are here. To love and be loved, to make babies. To see them laugh and grow. To give them everything you never had. To give them the end of the world. To let them care for you while you choke on asphalt and sewage. To have them wipe your ass when you can no longer. To bury you in what is left. To weep at your cancerous wreckage. To resuscitate you to bear witness to the end. Its all you ever wanted.
Suicide. I am nothing. I am helpless. I am worthless. I am a disappointment to myself. I consider you. I consider you as an option. I have potential. I have potential and it is not enough.
Could this all be a farce? Could this climate change be a masterfully designed hoax? This earth I drive across is solid, unchanged. The mountains glare at me through waves of hot red sun and dust. I sweat. I have no air conditioning. I have what is provided to man. What man has raped from the earth. I speed across bellowing pop tunes and drinking in life. I am free. I flee. I am afraid of the truck driver. I am afraid of myself. I am afraid of the future.
The future.
Come hither. Come lose yourself in my entanglement. Come and I will ease your sorrows, I will take from you what you never wanted. What you never had. Find your way to my threshold and I will absorb your breath, your life. I nature. I forest of suicide. I, Aokigahara of the earthly world. I will be your doorstep into the ever after. I will be your chosen grave. I will be your only sense of power.
Invoke the mystery of the inexplicable draw. Join a brotherhood of death. Join a parade of sorrow. Take what is yours to take and what will be yours regardless. Take it and cease to contribute to my pain.
Jonestown, 1978. Peoples Temple. Mass suicide. Suicide murder. I am newly born. Don’t cry. This is no way for us to die. We must die with some dignity.
Thirty years. We must die with some dignity. Mass suicide or suicide murder?
Are we there yet? Are we dead yet? My beheaded self watches expressionless. In awe, in wonder. It is amazing. Life is amazing. Death is amazing. Murder is amazing. Suicide is rational. Suicide is what we are committing. Who will be saved? Will you join us in this seventh circle of Hell?
You walk past misery. You walk past agony writhing on the concrete armour of the earth. Is this dignity? Hastings Street. The unwritten circle of hell. The living breathing foreshadow of our sentencing. You will pay for this. We will pay with our selves, with our bodies, we will reap what we sow, we will agonize each in due time . The unimaginable suffering of acreage, of battery cages, of snouts and feathers and branches and reptilian scales. The burger mart. The drug mart. The money mart. The Wal-Mart.
The competition gets greener. The competition sparks competition. The intent appears to be winning. The natural beneficiary of our market system. The money comes, the ethics come, the people come. The grassroots activist is absorbed into the media, into the mainstream economics. The beaten, weathered upstream plight reaps offspring that reap offspring. The water rushes around my consciousness. Which way was I going? Which way am I swimming, which way should I be swimming? To swim upstream is to reap greater reward. The awareness grows. The value system takes root. The stewardship, the footprint. Leave it as you found it. I am lost now, I have done my part. I cant discern upstream from downstream. I want the greater good, I want the best for the many. I want that which is right. Did I hit my head against the rocks on this journey? Did anyone witness my intent? Which way was I going? Which way is right?
Corporate Responsibility. This movement in the face of countermovement is moving things for real this time. We scoff at green washing, we will not be fooled. We believe the companies and corporations are motivated only by greed. The counter culture movement is alive and feisty with resentment in the face of big box retailing and other massive vehicles of capitalist enterprise. But this corporate responsibility, isn’t this idea what we have been asking for? Did we secretly wish that the system would fall, would fail miserably and take all the blame? Could this naive and hopeful exercise really be the solution? Perhaps it is our only option in lieu of shutting down the entire economic system of which we glory in. Tear the choices and bargains and lifestyle from the many, I dare you. Tear from the haves what the have nots have not. Ration and redistribute. Or attempt to subvert this machine. Be realistic. Be efficient.
What do I mean by subvert? I convince myself to get inside, get inside a little deeper and really identify the bleak situation. To really seek out the evidence of ill intent. To prove to myself that the beast is hungry for destruction, that it stops for no one and that it will eat us alive. To be consumed by our ultimate obsession. A fable of morality waiting to unfold. We know how this ends.
You my love are my Frankenstein, I will lust for you, I will make you mine, I will chase you to the ends of the earth and endear you to all. I will have my way with you and when you outgrow me I will cast you out. I will wait fearful of the moment when you wreak your havoc and destroy your very maker. I will recklessly indulge in this theatre of looming disaster.
Who am I a leader?
But inside I find I no mastermind. I find no purposeful ill intent to harm. I found no hateful reduction of my concerns. I do find carelessness, I find misinformation, I find blindness and I find disinterest. I am dejected by this. Countermovement requires stubborn resistance. An open and willing foe is difficult to combat. Here was my space, my niche to fill. Here was the slow and agonizing journey of change. This process is taxing and heavy, it is filled little with tangible reward or acknowledgement. It is smiling in the face of obvious trivialities that demean or rattle the progress. It is smiling in the face of the many when they ask you what really is the point. When they doubt the relevancy of the success as I do, it is disguising the fear and inspiring the compliance. It is being the example of change, the example of the only direction that holds potentiality. This many, this everyone is a mass of denial and doubt. But they can be corralled and cajoled and engaged in unexpectedly fruitful ways. They will sort, they will take action, they will consider, they will create and they will find meaning. They will add value to the value added statements. They will make it their own. They will comply and they will communicate. They will collectively create consciousness.
Normalcy. I will quest for normalcy. Normalcy you tell me is the full circle experience of death and dying. Death and ending, it is all normal – so seek the quietude, seek the peace. Give yourself over to the experience of life and the death that you rail so hard against. Why do you fight? Let me show you something. Let me show you the way.
Are we still fitfully clinging to the slippery bank of denial? You cannot stay here for much longer friend. You are going to have to let go. You are going to have to accept the encroaching end.
I am afraid you wont experience everything I have to offer. I am afraid you wont see me inside and out. You have me, you had me. I am over to you now. I cant get through. I keep trying. I cling. I relish the abuse and the final chances to touch you. I am terrified. I know you have missed most of me. I am terrified. I have shown you the rabbit hole and you have passed me by. I have thrown myself at the loss and I cling to the end.
Grief. How can I not be waiting for the loss. How can I ape the comfort you need from me. The prelude to death. With warning and perspective does grief come after or before the loss.
I have no answers so I throw my arms around you and close my eyes against the pain. I have to taste of you, to smell of you, to ache for you before you are gone. I tear at the coming end. I rail against it. You are cold to me. You turn away. You saw this coming and you fake remorse. The landslide, the wash of waves, the winds of deliverance. The trees recede, the rain tears at my skin. The sun deceives with its warming touch – only to scald and blister after he is gone.
This is about changing minds. This is about changing behaviours. This is about gaining the momentum of the many through change. The mechanisms we might use in any of our feeble but valiant hearted attempts may not save us but will surely speak of our intent. If we fail will it matter? The brave gesture in the face of terror. I will not suggest that we go on drinking our cocktails and dancing on the ballroom deck as this ship goes down in the night. What a romantic and reasonable, rational end. What a beautiful and idealized moment to share. I will fight. I will fight while you carry on. I will scream at the waves crashing in, I will cling to your mast. I will agonize over the moments slipping through my fingers, of the dreams unlived as they sink the bottom. I will not ease my mind while you dance the end away. I will have missed the moment but I will remember everything.
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